Leo Burnett, LG2 and BBDO enjoyed a gold rush, while Cundari won the single biggest honour at the 90th Marketing Awards in Toronto Friday night.
Cundari and client The Hospital for Sick Children won Best of Show for “Pain Squad,” a smartphone app created to help researchers develop better pain management programs for kids undergoing cancer treatment.
Filling in pain logs becomes particularly arduous for children undergoing treatment, so they often go incomplete. Understandable, but problematic for researchers for whom the information is vital. Cundari solved the problem by gamifying the process.
“Traditionally the Marketing Awards hasn’t awarded Best of Show to cause-related creative,” said Andrew Simon, jury co-chair and chief creative officer at Blammo. “But client expectations for not-for-profit creative have risen in the past few years and because of that, the work has also gone to a new level.”
“It was impossible to ignore the Sick Kids app from Cundari,” said Eva Van den Bulcke, co-chair and co-creative director at Sid Lee. “It’s a noble cause and it’s digital, but that’s not why it won Best of Show. Quite simply, the jury saw it as creative problem-solving at its best.”
“Pain Squad speaks to the power of creative agencies to solve real world problems,” added Tom Gierasimczuk, editor-in-chief of Marketing.
“Anyone who was at the show Friday night or who has had a chance to review the awards book saw that there was a lot of really great, world-class advertising created in Canada this year. But we also all know the industry is changing radically and Cundari’s Pain Squad is proof that Canadian agencies are changing to keep up. We think the judges’ choice for Best of Show was an excellent one.”
Pain Squad also won gold in the Digital Apps/Mobile category, which marked another departure for the Marketing Awards. For the first time, the show included digital categories, which in the past were awarded during the Digital Marketing Awards, a separate event held each fall.
“Digital has become completely integrated into every discussion in every marketing department across the country,” said Lucy Collin, publisher of Marketing. “Because of that, we decided to integrate the Digital categories into the main Marketing Awards show.”
Cundari also won a gold for its BMW 1M Campaign.
And while two gold and the Best of Show makes for a pretty great night, Leo Burnett has lots to brag about, too. The agency won seven golds: three for the long-running but still-fresh James Ready campaign; two for Procter & Gamble’s Bounty print work and two more in Public Service for the Raising The Roof charity.
BBDO won or shared six golds: two for Wrigley Canada’s Skittles brand (the ultra-popular “Touch the Rainbow” creative) and two for Cara Operations’ Rotisserie Channel for Swiss Chalet. The other two were shared with sister shop Proximity: one for Frito Lay’s Doritos brand and the other for “Poopbags” for Mars Petcare.
LG2 is taking five golds back to Montreal, two for its “Magic Hat” outdoor execution for the Quebec City Magic Festival, one for a Krispy Kernels TV spot, and two for the Quebec government.
Other multiple gold Winners included:
• Rethink with four – two of which were for online executions for Orkin, one in Self Promotion and the fourth was in Public Service for “Oil Poster” for Dogwood Initiative
• Saatchi & Saatchi won three for the Tourette Syndrome Foundation of Canada
• Lowe Roche/Amuse Atelier also won three – two for the infectious “Contagion” billboard for the movie of the same name, and the third was for Johnson & Johnson.
Sid Lee and Marketel each won two golds, while singles went to Blast Radius, Bleublancrouge, Bos, Cloudraker, Cossette, Dare, DDB, Evidently, Grey, John St., JWT, Red Urban and Taxi.
The complete list of winners will be available at MarketingMag.ca in the coming week.
Also added to the Marketing Awards show this year was the ACA gold medal presentation. For seven decades, the gold medal has been one of Canadian marketing’s most prestigious honours. This year, it was given to renowned Schulich School of Business marketing professor Alan Middleton.
“We were thrilled the ACA agreed to present the gold medal during the Marketing Awards, and even more thrilled when we found out who was going to receive it,” said Collin. After starting his career client side, Middleton joined JWT Toronto where he rose through the ranks, eventually running Enterprise and then JWT Japan. From there though, Middleton went back to school to earn his Ph.D and has since become one of the most accomplished and respected academics in the field.
“Alan Middleton is truly one of the most insightful, respected and articulate leaders in the industry and a very worthy recipient of this honour. Marketing was glad to be a part of it,” said Collin.
More than 1,500 entries were submitted to the 2012 Marketing Awards across 60 categories. That submitted work was scored online by a jury of nearly 60 leading creatives across the country. The co-chairs used those scores to determine the shortlist of work debated, discussed and ultimately voted-on by a live jury of 18 creatives over two days in April.
Aside from the 47 Golds that were awarded, the jury voted for 64 Silvers and 76 Bronze awards.
